Written by: Greg Ellifritz
Last Saturday I attended Larry Lindenman’s excellent class on the use of saps and blackjacks for personal defense (full review out later this week).
During the class, a student asked if the sap would break a side car window. No one in the class knew the answer.
Today I was on the range for in-service firearms training at the police department. This training session consisted of shooting at and from automobiles. As such, we had some junker cars on the range that the department is going to shoot up. That gave us a couple windows we could break.
On our lunch break, I decided to test and see if I could break a window with the sap. For the purposes of this test, I used an older, beat up, Bucheimer “Texan” sap that weighs 13 ounces. This is one of the biggest saps on the market. Check out the video below:
No luck at all.
After I failed miserably, my cameraman and department training officer Bryan McKean suggested we try a couple of less conventional strikes as options. He suggested using an “abanico” (fan) strike from the Filipino stick fighting arts. He tried the strike three times. On the first two efforts, it failed, but on the third, the window broke.
I had to try it. My “abanico” must not be up to par. I gave it a few shots with no window breakage.
Bryan was convinced he could break the window in one attempt with a properly performed abanico strike. I gave him the sap and he performed masterfully, effortlessly breaking the window.
Rather than admitting that Bryan’s sap game was better than mine today, I will say that my ineffective strikes must have weakened the glass and facilitated his superior performance. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Will the sap break a window? The answer is “yes,” but only if you use some technique. Caveman clubbing proved ineffective.
For additional sap content, check out this video from class where The Tactical Professor shows everyone how to make a sap holster.
